Andromeda: Cultures: Perseids

The Perseids were the first aliens to contact Humans without getting dressed up in green costumes and shouting iggy iggy. They actually look like humans mostly except for a bony face and black eyes. They look very attractive to people who have had a few too many drinks – in say, a pub.

Humans and Perseids are very close both physically and politically. It would be the Perseids that the Humans would turn to for help in trouble and the two races have very strong ties.

They are not similar reproductively. Perseids are bisexual and have the ability to fertilize their partner OR give birth. Parenthood is limited to a brief affair however, as when the offspring is born, it is handed over to the Government for rearing. The parents usually go their separate ways and the child feels no particularly strong bond with the parents.

Their homeworld is a planet called Ugroth in the Milky Way galaxy, but since Perseids were great colonizers, they have no particular affinity with that world emotionally or physically.

Persieds are best known for being Bureaucrats. After being conquered by the Vederans thousands of years ago, they quickly showed that they were capable and efficient officers and rapidly gained power in Commonwealth government departments. These bureaucratic tendencies make them seem irritating and formal to the point of being boring.

The Perseids have seemingly remained friends with humans and developed over the 300 years since the war. They support a well established scientific community and in the episode “Banks of the Lethe” used the Andromeda Ascendant’s computer power to help in the development of a transportation device.

In return for this assistance, a Perseid government became the first world to sign up to the new Commonwealth Charter.